1. Field of the Invention
The object to which the invention protected by this patent refers is a “Device for cleaning the filter pipes used to extract fruit juice”, which enables the extraction of fruit juice in conventional machines without the need to interrupt the process every once in awhile.
2. Description of Related Art
The known procedure for extracting juice from fruit, in particular citric fruits, is to introduce the fruit in a machine that performs this function. To this end, the fruit is channeled and pushed by feed forks to receptacles that receive the fruit, where the fruit is deposited. At the same time, this machine is provided with other receptacles that are located above and are vertically aligned with the receptacles that receive the fruit and that move vertically to trap the fruit.
A cutter then makes a circular incision at the top and bottom of the piece of fruit and, when the upper and lower receptacles compress and squeeze the fruit, the juice exits through a filter pipe located below the receptacles towards a juice collector.
The filter pipe into which the fruit juice enters has holes all along its surface that become obstructed when the fruit pulp gets stuck in them. Therefore the machinery has to be stopped every once in awhile (approximately every 6 or 7 hours) to clean the filter pipe, thus diminishing the performance and autonomy of this machinery.